Forget the white cube — here’s the green house
Last monday, three Guelph artists in the MFA program took their new show, Going On Without Us, out of the gallery and into the greenhouse — specifically the U of G’s EC Bovey Teaching Greenhouse. “We were interested in getting outside of being just in a gallery space, which is usually a white cube, and all our work is dealing with plants and fruit and we thought, ‘What would it look like if the objects came into a space like this?’” said Emily Moriarty, who collaborated on the show with Sarah Davidson and Daniel Griffin Hunt.
The change of venue was certainly effective in adding a new dimension to the pieces, making them less ostentatious and more like a statement of fact. It was also much more fun than a traditional exhibit, requiring more effort on the part of the viewer to navigate the pieces rather than simply presenting them. Sarah Davidson added, “It’s also so much a part of the University of Guelph. There’s a lot of agricultural research and plant science happening here. It seems like it would make sense in conversation with where we are geographically.”[trx_slider engine=”swiper” custom=”yes” count=”3″ offset=”0″ orderby=”date” order=”desc” controls=”yes” pagination=”no” titles=”no” descriptions=”0″ links=”yes” crop=”yes” autoheight=”yes” slides_per_view=”1″ slides_space=”0″ interval=”5000″ top=”inherit” bottom=”inherit” left=”inherit” right=”inherit”] [trx_slider_item src=”https://www.theontarion.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/03/PlantArt2_Catherine-Cooper.jpg”] [trx_slider_item src=”https://www.theontarion.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/03/PlantArt3_Catherine-Cooper.jpg”] [/trx_slider]
“In my practice, I deal with a level of material agency, a practical animism and material intelligence — the way that humans would engage with fruit typically, the way that those things are re-negotiated as art, and the way that those things are subsequently re-negotiated with the environment around them. In these works, the melons move and roll around their new environment and the lemons are stacked to human stature, both being re-negotiated in space.” — Daniel Griffin Hunt
“It’s playing with the hierarchical relationship we think we have between us and things we think of as lower on the food chain, so to speak.” — Sarah Davidson[trx_slider engine=”swiper” custom=”yes” count=”3″ offset=”0″ orderby=”date” order=”desc” controls=”yes” pagination=”no” titles=”no” descriptions=”0″ links=”yes” crop=”yes” autoheight=”yes” slides_per_view=”1″ slides_space=”0″ interval=”5000″ top=”inherit” bottom=”inherit” left=”inherit” right=”inherit”] [trx_slider_item src=”https://www.theontarion.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/03/PlantArt5_Catherine-Cooper.jpg”] [trx_slider_item src=”https://www.theontarion.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/03/PlantArt4_Catherine-Cooper.jpg”] [/trx_slider]
“I work between painting and drawing, and these are very loosely based on posters that show either botanical specimens or animals, but I’m slightly making fun of that form. These aren’t identifiable plants or animals obviously, but the way that they’re laid out on the page might suggest they might be specimens collected somewhere. I usually use historical sources — art historical and ecological historical sources, putting them together.” — Sarah Davidson
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“A lot of my stuff [uses] minimal interactions with plants. We have this one looking in the mirror, and part of it is as soon as you do a gesture or an action like that, I immediately want to be like, “He’s looking in the mirror,” or, “It’s looking in the mirror.” It’s dealing with, similar to Dan’s work, putting these things on the same level as us. Some of the plants have earrings on them, piercing them, or decorating them in some way, again relating to a person.” — Emily Moriarty
“What is our future relationship with plants and nature? If we keep destroying the Earth, is this what going into nature will be like? This controlled environment with plants from all over the world that don’t necessarily belong together?” — Emily Moriarty
Photo by Cat Cooper